James May Quotes

So Now You're Death: Here's What You'll Need

I have just made out my will and given all the things I have and many that I haven't.

When you've told someone that you've left them a legacy the only decent thing to do is to die at once.

When you have told anyone you have left him a legacy, the only decent thing to do is die at once.

Nobody knows the man behind Rajesh Khanna, because that never existed. In his last few days, he had told me, 'Pack up, show is over.'

You can't be new for too long. You want to just respectfully disappear. It's a bit sad sometimes. Michael Jordan retired like a god, and then he came back... We don't want to go out like that.

Believe me, when you die, it's everybody else's but your problem

I've been short all my life. And if anyone wonders what my dying wish will be, they can stop wondering. That will be easy. I'll just tell them, 'I'll have a short bier.'

To neglect at any time preparation for death is to sleep on our post at a siege; to omit it in old age is to sleep at an attack.

Dead bodies are such trouble,” Evie said with a little sigh, and Mabel had to turn her head away so as not to laugh.

It is both humiliating and humbling to discover that a single generation after the events that constructed me as a public personality, I am remembered as a hairdo.

It is more reasonable to wish for reputation while it may be enjoyed, as Anacreon calls upon his companions to give him for present use the wine and garlands which they propose to bestow upon his tomb.

"My obit is going to be full of Bogart, I'm sure," she says, adding, "I'll never know if that's true. If that's the way it is, that's the way it is."

You don't get to choose what you get famous for and you don't get to control which of your life's many struggles gets to stand for you.

There is a strange charm in the thoughts of a good legacy, or the hopes of an estate, which wondrously removes or at least alleviates the sorrow that men would otherwise feel for the death of friends.

I'm not nearly the saint some of my fans imagine and I'm nowhere near the devil my detractors wish, so you simply take both of those with a grain of salt.

[When I die] if I leave behind me ten pounds...you and all mankind [may] bear witness against me, that I have lived and died a thief and a robber.

I scrolled on down to the obituaries. I usually read the obituaries first as there is always the happy chance that one of them will make my day.

It's a good thing [James] Dean died when he did. If he'd lived, he'd never have been able to live up to the publicity.

The whole earth is the sepulchre of famous men.

"What would people say about you when you're gone?" That to me was a very important question. I thought about that for a couple of years and said, "What people say about you when you're gone doesn't matter. You're gone." What really matters is, "What do you say about yourself in the here and now? Are you proud of what you're doing?" If you had a short lease and it ended today, or it ends tomorrow, what would you wish you would have done? You better do it.

Even if it's being a Beatle for the rest of my life, it's still only a temporary thing.

Death and taxes may be inevitable, but they shouldn't be related.

So what if someone wrote your obituary... that doesn't mean you are obligated to die.